The Shield Problem(s)

[Musashi]

Carl, you're not getting my point. I'm not saying the shield helps in melee. I think it's fair to say that testing bears out that shields are useless in melee. I just dispute the conclusion that they actually HURT a unit's effectiveness. I don't believe we have enough data to make that conclusion yet.

[Carl]

Sorry, misunderstood you.

Just done my tests and some intresting data came up.

With the sheild AND extra defence skill the Hashashiem tended to inflict eithier heavy losses or a near draw before running off. More towards the draw in general.

Without the sheild they inflicted draws, one defeat, and one heavy losses result on the HB.

I also re-ran it with defualt stats as I wanted to check my variances their too. Tended towards low to modarte losses on the HB.

I don't know if the sheild is hindering things as much as some people claim, but it's having some minor negetive effects at the least IMHO. I don't think it's as bad as some people claim though.

[sapi]

I think the severity of the issue may be exaggarated simply because the only way to definitely test something like this (without hundreds of samples) is to raise the stat by an arbitarily large amount; while this is fine for testing we have to remember to take into account the massively inflated stat when analyzing the results.

[Carl]

Good Point Sapi.

[IvarrWolfsong]

"Heavy Billmen against Hasidim they slaughter the Hasidim for almost no losses"

I know it is a typo but I couldn't help thinking of some old Hasidim fellow in Brooklyn brokering a deal for sme diamonds and then getting chased down and hacked to death by Monty Python-like Billmen. :P

[The Stranger]

Mate, this is a very old issue - varangian guard (like every 2handed unit which doesn't use a sword) are bugged and don't get kills except in the initial charge.

could you then explain to me why JHI totally slaughter every unit...? they use a non sword 2handed weapon... actually the same as the varanigian guard...

[The Stranger]

has any of you checked what for effect the shield value has on missile fire? before we all start to change things... high shield value might have a big impact on that... so if that is the case... downing the shield value to 0 isnt such a good idea

[Revenant]

could you then explain to me why JHI totally slaughter every unit...? they use a non sword 2handed weapon... actually the same as the varanigian guard...

They probably use halberd animation(there is the cool trip attack:), which is very effective. For example Halberd militia has very low stats and is very capable unit too.

[Revenant]

has any of you checked what for effect the shield value has on missile fire? before we all start to change things... high shield value might have a big impact on that... so if that is the case... downing the shield value to 0 isnt such a good idea

There are two solutions. The first one is to transfer shield into armor and armor protects against missiles too. The second is to left shield there, but compensate in raising defence skill, no difference again. But we can test it.

[Carl]

The problem with transfering it to the armour is that it's effected by AP weapons which drasticly changes a number of intended balances.

Any foot unit with a sheild giving 6 defence, (most of the dedicated CC units), will suffer a 3 point defence drop against AP attacks, thats quite a big drop and will defintly mess stuff up IMO. It also has big implications for raking fire and HA firing from the rear.

Really we can't come up with a solution that works and dosen't mess up the Auto-Calc ourselves. I've come to the conclusion you can't have a working Auto-Calc whilst still having everything balanced.

[hrvojej]

For the sceptics:

The same setup as before (post #9 of this thread), Hungarians vs. French.

Hungarian kills/French kills

52/4
51/14
56/16
52/14
50/17
49/10
49/7
57/13
53/14
41/21

When pooling the results together, the sample size is 20, which is sufficient.
Hungarians won them all, never lost a general, killed 13 French generals. Mean of Hungarian kills 52.35 +/- 4.7, mean of French kills 14.95 +/- 6.15. Variances are equal, test power is 1.0, 95% confidence intervals are cca. 43-61 for Hungarians and cca. 2.5-27.25 for the French, there's less than 1 in 10000 chance of obtaining these results by chance alone. The probability of getting 20 wins in a row by chance alone with everything else being equal is also less than 1 in 10000, and also 1:10000 for killing 13 generals while losing none. And this is for units which nominally had 16 def vs. 42 def, or if shield had no effect on melee then both had the same def of 16!!

The shield has a negative effect on melee. The problem is how to fix it.

Cheers,

edit: sorry, to be perfectly accurate, the chances are 1:10000

[CeltiberoMordred]

Well, now we know why peasants are better in hand to hand than professional spearmen, or why pikemen are so tough Vs infantry swordmen... And so on.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

That is...

I don't know whether I shall cry or laugh.

It would be interesting to test the impact on a shooting contest. Give the AI a bow and let it shoot you?

Louis,

[Carl]

Well, now we know why peasants are better in hand to hand than professional spearmen, or why pikemen are so tough Vs infantry swordmen... And so on.

Yep. Add it to the defence skill stat and Town Milita can do MAD on Peseants and Militia Spearmen can beat them, (just), lets not even mention what it does for Sword & Sheild units agaisnt fixed Bill units and JHI. Pikes still pwn, but i'd geuss not as hard, (never tried them before I Implemented the fix into my units file).

[Ulstan]

Wow, this is certainly interesting. First the 2H animation bug and now the shield effectiveness bug O.o

I think even if shields do nothing in melee, something is borked, but if they are actually hindering people in melee (as seems evident) that would explain a lot of the goofiness we see.

Can you put in a negative value for the shield in the statfile? Curious to see if that is possible.

[Foz]

Carl, please stop testing by just adding the shield value to the defense skill field. Every single unit in the game will perform better with this done, provided it has any shield points, so it proves absolutely nothing that a unit modified like this does better in combat.

I would also like to point out that my testing of armoured sergeants vs. mailed knights already helps neutralize one of the most random factors - the charge. I've noticed especially that spear units charge very oddly. Against cav, mostly they stop to group up before charging, but are overrun before getting up to speed and brandishing weapons. That's with a single-click charge. With a double-click charge they are considerably better about getting shield up and weapon out at the right time, but again still sometimes charge in without having weapons and shield set (i.e. fail to have a charge trigger), only to be completely slaughtered. The easiest fix was to not issue a single command to the unit during combat. I did absolutely nothing except set the unit to run speed while it was sitting still in order to chase the knights better when they try to recharge, which should make the situation vary not at all from run to run as I issue no commands. The end result is that my runs for each stat set looked practically identical, down to when the knights would pull out, where they would go to, how the spearmen chased after them, how many of each unit were lost on initial contact... pretty much every way imaginable. The 1 exception from that first post is the first entry under 5/9/1, the 26/32 entry. This one I recall in particular, because it went a little differently. The knight general was killed on charge impact, causing his unit to rout early. Even so, the results appear to be on their way to the typical kill ratio for that stat level.

That leads to another factor that can be removed, though: the morale factor. IIRC, the EDU lists a possible morale factor that locks morale in place so the unit is unable to rout. This seems very promising as it would force combat to the last man instead of allowing the early endings we sometimes get currently.

As an additional note, switching sides in a battle is not a good way to go about things. The idea in testing is to isolate the effect of stat changes to only one of the units in the combat. This means you must do everything identical in your runs, only changing unit stats for ONE of the units for some of the runs in order to gauge what effect that change has on the combat. The idea is that the AI should be forced as much as possible to do the same things in combat, to make the stat change the only possible reason for any difference in combat results.

I think later on (when I'm at home) I'll run some tests using 2 identical units like the DFK and DNK that Revenant mentions in post #18. I'll be doing the following:

1. Units with vanilla stats except: charge set to 0, morale locked if possible to implement. With charge 0, charging should have no impact, which means I can safely leave the unit in my control sit without adversely affecting it... which is exactly what I intend to do.

2. One of the units will have shield value added to skill (+6 skill pts I'm guessing), the other will use 0 shield (probably this is -6 shield pts), so I'm testing to see if skill points equal to shield has the same effect on a unit that removing its shield does. A result of dead even battles will illustrate that positive skill points directly equal negative shield points, i.e. that shield points operate exactly in equal magnitude but the opposite direction than they should. I hypothesize this will be the case, with let's say less than 10 of either group ever surviving the combat.

3. I'll then run a control test to make sure the units are in fact even in vanilla. This should be more important than just noting how even their combat is with #2 stats, as the vanilla stats have to provide results similar to those with #2 stats applied to show the correct relationship between positive skill points and negative shield points.

4. All tests will be run with default custom battle settings. I select grassy plain and hit go, select the 2 factions, pick each unit, and begin battle. I have been doing this already whenever I test, but wanted to be clear what my practices are.

[Carl]

@The Foz: I've allready come to the conclusion that the sheild is borked.

All i was saying is that with the fix i prefer in place, spears give cav and peseants trouble.

In addition, as i pointed out before it DOSEN'T MATTER weather sheilds are borked or not to me, (when i first posted this i though that sheilds where borked but wasn't 100% sure BTW), adding the sheild value to the skill value balances the sheild equpied units out against the 2-handers nearly perfectly IMHO.

It dosen't really matter weather sheilds are working or not. Adding a value equivelent to the sheild value to the sheild units defence skill creates a much more fun and balanced game IMO, (but only IMO).

My only point was that if you DID add the sheild onto the skill then units with sheilds (depending on weather they where spear equiped or sword/mace/axe/hammer equipped), they did much better against cav/2-Handers, especially the really powerful ones.

The idea with Lock morale is good though.

I also ran some Hasashiem tests in case you hadn't noticed where I DID do a scientific test to see if sheild where working.

[The Stranger]

I've run some tests...

Spanish Musketeers (14 rangedamage, AP) vs Feudal Dismounted (20 Armour, 0 Defense, 20 Shield)

I display the total kills made by my musketeers after 4 volleys, because after 4 volleys the enemy is so close it will charge and the melee will begin.

37 (1st fight)
38 (2nd)
29 (3rd)
35 (4th)
31 (5th)
*********
Now I shall display the results of the same battle only now the Dismounted Feudal Knights have a TOTAL defense of 0 (0 armour, 0 defense, 0 shield)

30 (1st)
32 (2nd)
27 (3rd)
32 (4th)
35 (5th)

I don't know how missiles work then... but it seems like armour nor shield has any significant effect...

Ive also run some tests with rebizond archers and the results were all more or less the same, about 8 kills after 6 volleys... I've changed everything in their defense stats possible but the results remained the same...

[Spark]

Test with some non-AP archer unit. Musketeers can shoot through a lot of armor.

[The Stranger]

I tested with trebizond archers too... i can post the exact results if you want to... but it comes down to this every battle 6 volleys, 5-12 kills... whatever you change to their defense

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

By defense, you mean shield? or shield + armour? or overall defense?

Louis,

[Revenant]

Ok, I did some tests, as the_foz_4 proposed, I used exactly the same conditions as was his proposal (including morale off). Difficulty was on normal.

I used Dismounted Feudals (charge 0 , shield 0) and Dismounted Normans (charge 0, Shield 6, defence skill + 6)

I ran 10 battles. I controlled Normans at first.
Results: They won in 9 battles from 10! The remaining number of soldiers:5,16,11,35,7,3,7,31,22. In the battle, where Feudals won, 17 of them remained.

One thing I noticed was the fact the computers soldiers enter combat differently from mine soldiers. Computers unit attacked "from move" - they moved and suddenly attacked. My unit moved, then halted in close proximity of enemy and then charged. So this is something we must calculated with.

Then I ran another ten battles, but controlled Feudals, nothing changed.
Results: They won in 9 battles from 10! (what a surprise...) The remaining number of soldiers: 16,27,18,11,18,8,22,6,7. In the one battle, when Normans won, 7 of them remained.

Conclusion:

In the first set of battles, 137 soldiers remained on victorious side, in the second, 133. I think the results are pretty similar, so the shield probably really give penalty to defence as high as is its number.

But then we have the massive discrepancy between win/loss ratio of human vs. computer controlled unit with supposedly similar stats...

I will do another set of tests, this time with units using vanilla stats.

But it seems that even the computer ability to control units is bad.

[Shahed]

Hmm this would be another biggie, if proved with conviction.

[The Stranger]

i think i have another one.

i thought i'd run some tests with retinue longbowmen. the numbers are the kills scored by my longbowman after 6 volleys.

Retinue longbowman (8 attack AP) vs Dismounted Feudal (20 armour, 20 defense, 20 shield)

14 (1st battle)
5 (2nd)
17 (3rd)
5 (4th)
10 (5th)

so then i thought instead of changing the defense stats of the dismounted nobles, what would happen if i lowered the attack of the longbowmen... so here are the results... they will be shocking

retinue longbowmen (attack 0, i removed armourpiercing) dismounted feudal remained the same as above.

in my first battle my longbowmen scored 15 kills after 6 volleys... i found this so shocking i ran down to post this... i shall continue further tests but plz maybe someone else can do a similar test... maybe im just tripping

[Foz]

Yep. Add it to the defence skill stat and Town Milita can do MAD on Peseants and Militia Spearmen can beat them, (just), lets not even mention what it does for Sword & Sheild units agaisnt fixed Bill units and JHI. Pikes still pwn, but i'd geuss not as hard, (never tried them before I Implemented the fix into my units file).

Try them with twice the shield amount added into the skill field or shield added to armour then shield zeroed. I bet the spears will win the fight like you'd expect from how the vanilla unit sheet reads.

Can you put in a negative value for the shield in the statfile? Curious to see if that is possible.

Not sure... but if you can and do, it will probably bork the unit's ranged defense instead then, so this is no solution.

Odd results you have there Stranger, directly conflicting what I found from letting crossbow militia fire on a stationary unit of swordsmen. I only ran once each setting, but got good enough looking results with different shield values that I didn't do more - the shield cut down the swordsmen losses due to the crossbow's full ammo complement the higher it was set.

As for the newest results by Rev... oh *expletive deleted*

I saw someone post before that it might be easier to list the things in the game that work correctly than to list bugs - and sadly, it may actually be correct.

Rev, something to check for me: please make sure you're modifying the lines that aren't commented out. Each unit has attack stats that work, and attack stats that are commented out IIRC, just like it has armour stats that work and armour stats with a dif name that are commented out. I sincerely hope you are modifying the commented lines and that's why you're getting weird results - also make sure you're saving changes to the file, and loading correctly with file-first command line option. Check the info screen on the unit to verify it states the numbers you think you put into the file. I sincerely hope you've just missed something simple here...

[The Stranger]

i continued with the same stats as above and fought 4 more battles

results are 19 kills, 15 kills, 15 kills, 14 kills

i ran another test. because your tests confirmed that the shield value isnt added but distracted i also changed the feudal knigts stats. also because i feared that the melee stats may have been switched for missile stats i lowered those too.

Retinue (0 missile attack, 0 melee attack) Feudal (60 armour, 0 defense, 0 shield)

i only fought 2 battles because i thought the results are clear as it seems

1st battle: 15 kills
2nd battle: 9 kills

it seems that missile fire is totally random... its weird but not entirely gamebreaking

[Carl]

I'll go off and run some archer tests too as those results are defintly VERY worrying.

p.s. @Your Reply Foz: Thats what i'd expect and i've been tempted to increase the Defence skill of all sheild units a furthar 2 points to try and compansate without borking Auto-Calc any more.

[Revenant]

Rev, something to check for me: please make sure you're modifying the lines that aren't commented out. Each unit has attack stats that work, and attack stats that are commented out IIRC, just like it has armour stats that work and armour stats with a dif name that are commented out. I sincerely hope you are modifying the commented lines and that's why you're getting weird results - also make sure you're saving changes to the file, and loading correctly with file-first command line option. Check the info screen on the unit to verify it states the numbers you think you put into the file. I sincerely hope you've just missed something simple here...

Hey, I know how the stats are organized. I also checked the stats of the units when i was selecting my armies. The unit with shield + upped defence skill has defence higher than the other unit of 12 points. Only thing I should mentioned is that both units had charge 1 despite I changed it to zero in datasheet .

[The Stranger]

this is weird... because the longbowmen gave such a weird result i tried this.

Feudal dismounted (total attack 0, Total Defence 0) DFK (TA 0, TD 0)

result killed 47 enemies lost 57 men... your units still fight even if all their stats are 0

but what was even weirder is that i fought with those 0 stats feudal knights agains normal stats byzantine infantry... I WON?!?!

i killed 40 lost 11...

I'm starting to fear that somehow the game doesnt implements the changes i make even though i do save the changes made in the text files...

[Revenant]

this is weird... because the longbowmen gave such a weird result i tried this.

Feudal dismounted (total attack 0, Total Defence 0) DFK (TA 0, TD 0)

result killed 47 enemies lost 57 men... your units still fight even if all their stats are 0

but what was even weirder is that i fought with those 0 stats feudal knights agains normal stats byzantine infantry... I WON?!?!

i killed 40 lost 11...

I'm starting to fear that somehow the game doesnt implements the changes i make even though i do save the changes made in the text files...

Do you check the stats of the units before battle?